To Court with War
by dontcancelhousever
Summary: TDKR AU Don't worry it isn't much of an AU. But what if Talia hadnt come back to rescue Bane? What if someone else had gotten to him first? And what could that mean for Gotham, the League of Shadows and even Batman himself? Eventual slash.
1. Chapter 1

I am terrible at grammar and have no beta. Be gentle.

He had always heard that the desert was all dry heat. But he was soaking in his clothes, droplets were threading through his eyebrows and behind his ears. The gear was pretty light, lighter than the shit the army guys wore but still. It chafed at the insides of his arms and his pants stuck and clung. If he adjusted himself one more time, he was going to have to just finish the job.

This wasn't the idea he'd had in his head when he'd been picked up as a contractor. 'Protect people', they said, 'build schools in the third world' they said. So far the missions had been a lot of posturing with big guns and hanging out in air conditioned rooms playing with technology that he could have sworn had Bruce Wayne's finger prints on them. The other guys, cut ex-military men, were enjoying themselves, sharing scar stories. But John Blake didn't have many visible scars and none of the fighting he'd done had been in a uniform. Right out of the academy they had picked him up for his high scores and endurance tests. Also luck, his superior was chewing him out calling him 'hot head'. Then a bald man with glasses had approached in the aftermath, grinning. " want a job, Hot head."

But now he was just playing security, watching the area a well would go into. When the big wigs eventually siphoned the money from somewhere. He honestly wasn't doing a great job guarding the area. There were no tools to watch, nothing of real importance. In fact, he'd completely overreacted when some little kids started pilfering rocks from under the flapping tape. These kids were going to need to watch some serious Sesame Street to get back a good opinion of Americans. You know, after one of them chased after them with a giant unwieldy gun. Since then he had been wandering in larger and larger circles, walking a little ways up the dunes before letting himself trot back down. He ran, the next time around cresting the hill finally and officially leaving his post. A little ways away the sand hardened into rough clay and dirt and the lip of a well was silhouetted against the afternoon sun.

Well why the hell were they making a well right here. When there was one right over there? John stamped over to it, losing his traction over the rocks and thirsty earth. The low stone wall, he noticed, was worn with age, almost smoothed. He peeked over the side. Below he did see sloshing water but it was far away and pooled in the center of stone floor. And there were men down there, wrapped in dirty fabric. Earth tone shapes moving below on the staircase where they were disentangling a limp body from a rope noose.

A hanging. A prison in the earth.

He jerked back before they could see him and turned around sharply.

The children scattered.

" wait, hey I'm sorry!" John cried and he held up his hands supplicating when they started to stop and peer back like rabbits. " Do you speak any English?"

They all looked at one another but one of the smaller boys thrust out his chest and approached, followed closely by his compatriots. They looked like a little flock of sheep with curious black eyes.

" Small" said the boy and made pinching fingers.

" Good, good that's great. What is this?" They all stared at him. John forced himself to slow down.

"This?" he asked and pointed at the hole.

It was a long conversation with a great deal of hand motions and complete confusion but john managed to eek out the words 'warlord' and 'prison'.

He thanked the boys and gave them the coins from his pocket. One boy threw his in the hole and then looked to the others to get the joke. He got a wallop on the head for his trouble. John waved goodbye and then peered back over the edge.

They couldn't seem to see him. The set up was bizarre. Was it that you had to be strong enough to climb up and out? Was it a trick? Was it to drown them all when the rains came? He was scouring over the ground when he noticed that one of the men was sitting beside a partition, pressing up against it.

He was looking straight up at him.

And even from this far away, John could feel the heat of his eyes. And see the rust colored stains all over his clothes.

The practical part of his brain screamed ' serial killer'

The part that rescued kids said ' victim'.

He went to call it in.

_"What do you think you're doing?"_

John spun around, sliding in soaked socks. His 'commander' Terrence was standing behind him, although the military protocol was more relaxed in contracting. The hope being that you could motivate yourself.

" You had one job, Blake. One. You just cost me money. Now I have to buy rick all the beers. All of them. Fucking stupid of me." His dark features were pulled in annoyance. John wondered how many other bets he'd lost him.

" I'm sorry, I was following these suspicious kids"

"John. Don't blame the kids. Especially when they just ran by carrying your money openly."

John blanched.

" Howd you know it was mine."

" You dumbass, are the only one who didn't convert all your money. I love the US of A but I don't carry her worthless metal all over. Only you do that shit."

"Did you know about this?" asked John more softly. Terrence looked disinterested over his shoulder.

" So these people have a lot of wells. They also got no water sources. Let them have some excess, Nickels."

" No. its. The kids say it's a prison."

Terrence's face hardened suddenly.

" Then we should get out of here right now."

" There's a guy down there who's hurt pretty bad."

" John" snapped Terrence. " You aren't fucking superman. We are in a strange country far from home and we do not just snap up people's prisoners. You knew getting into this you were going to see some war crimes worthy shit. Grow up, man."

John felt his throat tighten. He wanted to be home. He wanted to be in Gotham, doing good. He wasn't helping anyone here. And the man had looked at him with those despairing eyes.

Green eyes with pale lashes. John got an idea.

" I think he's from Europe."

" what do I care where they get their crazies?" Terrence barked and started hunting through his pack for a canteen. One John knew would be full of orange juice. Terrence, for a giant imposing black man with a fierce underbite and a mean cursing streak, was a pretty big germaphobe. He was always filthy but it was 'natural', he was afraid to get sick. John could use that.

" Didn't we run into an English contract that was missing a man. A thick guy. What if he was injured, found here and then rather than deal with the 'who dun it' they just chucked him in?"

Terrence looked at him squarely and stopped squirreling.

John tried to hold a solid expression. " what if you or me got thrown in there, wounded with all that disease. We don't even know what theyre doing to him down there. A contractor, one of ours. Worse case scenario we just put him back in the hole if he isn't ours."

Terrence jutted his mouth out like a bulldog. " Lemme make a call" Terrence said and wandered a ways away. John had remembered the lost English men. He also knew he was dead and the contract had cleaned out of the desert. But scuttlebutt was fierce. Someone would remember the story and pass it on, since the actual finding had been so private.

Terrence came back, eyes narrowed. " Alright. So somebody's missing an English. Show me him." John pointed tentatively down, someone below saw the movement because a buzz of human voices started up from below. Echoing. The man didn't look up again but the sliver of his forehead was relatively pale. This could work.

" So how do you want to do this?" asked John, excited. " Do we repel?"

" Shit. We don't have that shit." Terrence said economically. " I called the guys. We'll lower you, King Friday, into the hole and we'll lift you back up again."

" King Friday" asked John.

" Mr. Rogers. You make moral proclamations all the time. You never seen Mr. rogers?"

" No." John laughed, masking that old anger. He hadn't had a frivolous childhood.

Turned out the guys who came were French and were cracking jokes about the enlighs before John even got the cable around his waist. By the twelfth dirty joke, John was glad for the woosh of adrenaline in his ears so he couldn't hear them. They started to lower him down. He hated heights but he was also one of those strange angry people who did things he hated, to fuck himself over. Prisoners were coming closer, like maggots out of flesh. John gagged at the smell and brandished his weapon, setting off a warning round into the far stone wall. They fell away, back into the dark.

His feet hit the top of the stairs. The man was across the water in that lower area.

" You" he theatre whispered. The man didn't move.

" Hey!" he hissed. The man rolled his head to look at him. He looked at John blankly, like he couldn't decide what emotion to muster up. " can you walk?"

The man looked at him for a moment. 'Maybe he doesn't know English,' John thought and wracked his mind for some Arabic. He couldn't remember.

" I'm here for you." John said. The man stared. " I'm here to save you." Still nothing. The men around the edge were jawing loudly. The man's eyes darted to the darkness.

" I'll protect you" John stage whispered. The man's eyes caught in something like awareness. Then he shuddered in some terrible suffering and rose.

The man lurched unsteadily to his feet and shuffled, slowly towards the stairs. The men were starting to approach. John let lose another round. They kept coming when they realized he wasn't hitting them. The man was halfway up the stairs.

" Faster, you have to go faster!"

The men were coming, he could see their beady eyes in between folds of cloth. He could smell them. The man, who was huge how was he going to carry him, was finally close enough.

" Hold on" John said. The man kind of slumped into him and the crowd surged. The rope went taut and they started to rise but the man was so heavy and John's ribs were compressing with the weight of just his upper arms. The man cried out in pain so John grabbed him up. And dropped the gun. The man kicked one insurgent in the head with a heavy foot but a pain like a nothing he'd ever felt before sank into his thigh. Above the crew were yelling, they pulled faster. The hands clutching them let go. John focused on holding on, baring his teeth through the pain. Friendly hands clutched them over the wall. With his back on hot ground, his arms were suddenly empty.

"He's bleeding out!" Terrence yelled. He couldn't focus on them touching him, hurting him because the man was running out of sight, hazing into the heat. John's eyes rolled and a nauseating darkness rolled over him.


	2. Chapter 2

John wasn't doing well. After the rescue, wherein his artery had been nicked, he had been in and out of consciousness in the American Embassy Hospital.

In between bouts of nausea, pain and blackness the prisoner debacle had been rising in volume outside his door. It took them about an hour to realize that the prisoner was not one of theirs; it took them another hour to realize the significance of that. Rather than hunting the man down or reporting the mistake to the warlord-the contracting company cut its losses. John had taken a well from that village.

Tears had beaded his eyes when he thought of the kids, curling small American coins in their hands.

With the contract cancelled, no one was paid and Terrence, with a warm hand on his shoulder, cut him loose. He'd gotten a severance pay but between a deposit on an apartment, medical bills and the flight home, John was screwed. He was picked up by his old unit but even with some quick healing, John was useless to a mobile unit. They posted him as a guard, watching school parking lots for kids smoking pot and standing traffic in the rain, with his partner, an old warhorse from the Joker era.

He'd been one of the men who'd been stripped down by the Joker for his assault on the mayor. He never shared stories though. His shaking hands told enough tales of guilt. He was heading for retirement, John for years of nothing. His contract years had alienated him, his discharge cruelly masking his potential. His peers distanced themselves, superiors called him a dumb thug behind bureaucratic paperwork.

Three years had passed and John was struggling up the stairs for home. The long knife had gone through the flesh, nicked the bone and pierced the inguinal artery. It was clean but his luck had been the nerve damage, giving him a deadened limp on cold nights.

He scrabbled for his keys, ignoring the shouting couple in the apartment below. Their window was open. The man was crying, the woman raging. John opened the door, went in and turned on every fan he owned. Which was three. He dropped onto his measly couch and enjoyed the white noise.

"_You have poor instincts."_

John was on his feet so fast that he nearly passed out. His leg however _did _give out. He fell to one knee. Blood was pounding in his head. A man, a giant man, was standing in the darkness of his bedroom doorway. The man moved forward slowly into the light. He was as hulking as a mountain with the predator grace of a big cat. A mask was wrapped around his shaved head like a horrible black spider. Over his mouth and nose was a mask of steel mandibles. He huffed like Darth Vader and his coat was furred at the neck. Hands locked at the lapel, the man looked down at him. His body was relaxed and curled inwards, like a big cat. With serenity in those greenish blue eyes and pale lashes. John sucked in a sharp breath.

"It's you."

The man from the hole. The man shrugged off his coat, to show a vest underneath, interlinked in eastern military fashion. He laid the coat on John's bed. John let himself sit on the floor in shock.

"Who are you?"

The man looked at him and then stepped forward with heavy feline grace into the room. He offered John his hand. John took it and the man brought him to his feet. John stumbled on the bad leg.

"You still suffer?" The man's breath rattled from deep within the respirator. His eyes were beautiful, almond and intense. Scars were speckled across his head between the tight grooves caused by the mask. His bulk loomed over John powerfully. His mouth felt dry.

"I asked you who you were?"

"You know how I am." The man said. "But if you wish to know what they call me, it is Bane."

He had been the Beast in the pit. He didn't remember life before but the doctor had spoken to him about it. The time before he'd been locked away from the others when he was young. Before his teddy bear had needed a knife. He'd apparently had no mother in his conscious lifetime and a father who had sold him to fill his criminal debts.

He remembered life in the hole, life looking up until it no longer troubled him too. He gave up on climbing before the old men. He knew there was nothing up there. And if you stared upwards you left your throat exposed. He killed, learning to use the heat of blood spraying all over him and to love the softening of his footsteps. As he grew, his muscles bulging to fit his growing violence, the light grew more blinding above and he avoided it. He went to the water at night; no one had approached him in years when it happened. One morning a woman was lowered, her long heavy dress shifting as the rope dropped her foot by foot.

Guards had accompanied her as well as the doctor, tanned from life above. They'd hurried her into Bane's old cell, draped and locked the door. The men hung around sniffing her perfume for weeks. They bayed like dogs when she wailed in childbirth, blood thick in the air. The babies cries shifted something in Bane. He'd heard men make screaming shrieks when they'd died in the caverns, often under his hands. Rape, torture and despair: these were all things he knew. The mewing of a human being, new and clean and pink. It was all new. He peered in curiously during the day when other men slept.

She glared back and him, beautiful and sheer. Her eyes softened slowly over the weeks. He brought her water to wash with. And wood to burn, torn from the hands of weaker men. The girl grew until she was a youth. Until he could smooth her fingertips through the grate. He'd never loved anything before. Not the sun or the moon. He'd needed sleep and food but nothing had enticed or soothed. And now here she was and while he respected the strength of the mother, he loved the girl. She was beauty, green eyed and perfect. Intelligent and lithe, she laughed under her breath and smoothed back his hair on the days when they all starved.

Oh his sweet, impossible Talia.

He'd been taking a rare rest on a low ledge when it all ended. A roar of men, screaming, the slam of a grate. He was moving before he could even see, knowing. The doctor. The morphine addict. He should have kept the key, insisted on it. He seized Talia around the waist and drew her out. He pulled her to the partition to shield her but they were ripping the mother apart. He wished he knew her name. She had stopped screaming. It didn't mean she was dead. Talia wasn't shuddering, she must have known their time was short. A child born to die. She started for the wall. He spun to block a man coming for her. She reached up the wall. He pushed her upwards and they seized him.

He fought, it was useless, they were fierce with the kill. He looked up at her and whispered 'goodbye' before they consumed him. Under the limbs, their ragged nails ripping him apart, he didn't see her escape. But he knew she would. They fought like chimps, ripping apart his mouth, crushing and cracking his teeth, his jaw. His ribs bent but the assault was on his face, his genitals. They assaulted him with all the hatred of the years he reigned over. All the men who couldn't get their hands on her, ravaged him. He didn't remember it all mercifully, his hemorrhaging head pulling consciousness away.

He didn't remember the aftermath blasted apart in the dragging haze of morphine. The doctor had leaned over him, face dark with concern. His breath stunk with the sweet rotting smell of addiction. He didn't know yet it would be the smell that encompassed the rest of his life. Most of his lips were gone, his teeth ripped out, the dry socket nerves exposed. His jaw had been fixed awkwardly. It seared and his sinuses were full. He couldn't hear, his ears unable to drain.

He was sick and destroyed. The doctor took as much responsibility as he was willing. He would take him out to sit in the sun for some of the day. Only his hulking body kept the curious at bay. Plus the doctor had shot one man who'd sniffed about him too long. A month passed and one day, he was slung back into a passage in the wall. He was locked there for three days. He mouthed water off the walls. He was so drugged that his eyes leaked, helpless as the centipedes and beetles enjoyed the salt of his filth. Eventually he was fished out, drugged more deeply and slicked down with water, food pushed into his rotting mouth. The men talked for weeks about the mysterious soldiers who'd come down on wires.

They'd been hunting for someone.

Bane knew it had been him.

He started looking up. He understood why the prison existed now. The other men had things waiting for them on the surface. The sharp suffocating shard of hope in his chest stirred him out of drugged bouts of nothing. He'd never wished for death before but he thought he could climb now. And just fall. He wasn't Talia. The pit would never give up its son. But it couldn't make him endure.

He'd been resting in the sun like a lizard when he'd heard it. A slight scrabbling above. The drugs were low in his system so he could hear acutely but only with pain to match. His hands were jerking with nerves flooded with agony. He looked up. A young man was looking down. His eyes were pinched dark with the light above. His skin was bedewed with sweat. He was like Talia, beautiful and impossible, like a flower unfolding in the center of the earth. He disappeared. Hope lanced through him, he hated it. He dropped his chin.

Don't look. It's too much.

Voices above and below. The men were coming out, curiously. The doctor was gone. Noone dragged him away. If they wanted him, he would fight until he was nothing. He would not be raped to death in the sight of an angel.

The man was lowered down in camouflage gear. His hair was hanging sweetly over his dark eyes. He was looking down into the dark with fear but not resignation. He wasn't here to stay. He was here of his own will. Bane looked off and away to his legs in front of him. He heard the boy whispering at him. He looked up. The boy extended his hand to him, the other was white around his rope.

The next few seconds were a blur of pain and horror. He stood and forded the water and stairs. He slung his body over the boy, who seized in pain between a knife stab and the dragging rope. A man's head was crushed in by Bane's own boot. They were pulled upwards and crested into the light. It burst into Bane and he couldn't hide.

The boy fell away and he ran.

His bound feet slapped in the dirt, the adrenaline forcing the drugs away faster. He ran until his feet were pulp and a city emerged in fading light. By night he had broken into a hospital, sick and roiling with jarring pain. He hooked himself up to an IV and pumped morphine into his veins. He shuddered in relief. He had kidnapped the chemist the next day. He kept him a cave, terrorizing him into revealing the secrets of chemical mathematics. Eventually Bane's own intelligence had allowed him to mix his own formula.

The chemist returned home, crippled by a chemically induced stroke. Bane was free of the desperation of the pain and the fatigue of the drugs. His secrets were safe, the blood on his hands only metaphorical. He made a name for himself as a mercenary. Years passed.

He was contracted to secure mining rights for a business man in America. A slimy mogul named Dagget. Bane had no interest in money but the medications needed, the tubing and paste that fed him, the disinfectant and intimate welding for the mask…these things were expensive. So he trod through jungles, strangling and breaking until the regime fell to his feet.

The man had brought him over to New York then, to act as security in his own plans for subterfuge. Bane had been wandering, watching the homeless youth, the ornate who sneered at him. This pit had steel cliffs. He hated it. It was cold and he missed the desert. He was watching a child try to steal from a convenience store when a police man approached. He gently chastised the child and sent him away. He turned from pacifying the angry clerk. He knew that boy. His beautiful brown eyes with that narrowing epicanthic fold.

He was leaner than before, paler. He seemed dimmed and he limped painfully. Bane followed him home for three nights. On the fourth, he entered the apartment. He was used to waiting for long periods but freedom had made him impatient. He burrowed his mask in a sweat soiled pillow. He could smell a warm scent over the heady chill of the vapor. He stroked his hands over the sheets. The boy slept here. He'd never been interested in sexuality of any kind. In the pit it was all violence: rape, torture or the rarest, birth. All blood and humiliation.

Occasionally men were companions, the old men would lean into each other's shoulder when they told stories, shuffle together to and from the water. One man had kissed Bane before he'd cut his wrists and bled out in the night. It had been just a light brush.

Bane had resisted striking him because no one had seen and the boy had been close to death anyway, refusing to eat. Mercy was not permitted but apathy was.

Everyone had been assaulted at one point in the pit; they simply killed or fought to force the predators to light, where they would be massed upon. This boy had buckled under it, sobbing softly in despair. The young policeman was just as gentle but he would have fought. And that knowledge made Bane want to touch him, smooth back his hair. He missed his mouth. He would never kiss the boy who had given him life, such as it was.

He had dozed against one of the walls as the rain began outside. The paperwork littering the table called him Robin Jake Blake. Bane remembered the men above him calling him, "John, John". But he was awake and ready when the boy tried his key, raking it across the lock in distraction. He'd stumbled inside and flipped on several fans before he dropped face first onto the couch. Bane was discouraged; the boy was clearly like the young man from his past. Still vulnerable, he hadn't learned.

He spoke to him in disdain. The boy jerked violently to his feet but his legs would not hold him. Bane wanted to mouth the skin beneath that smooth ear. He felt the crushed need harden his voice. The boys eyes snapped wide. He helped him to rise.

The man from the pit was standing in John's shitty kitchen. He'd gone through his envelopes. A risk inspired by a childhood hero would end in his murder. Fantastic. John wouldn't go down without a fight but despite bracing himself, the man, Bane, seemed uninterested. He'd even helped settle him on his feet. Odd.

" I have a lot of questions," John undertoned. Bane nodded slowly and then injected in that strange husky accent, " _I need to rest. We will talk in the morning. It is your day of freedom, is it not_?" The dread in his stomach was being replaced by an equally weighty confusion. The former prisoner had broken into his house to take a nap.

Bane walked away from him and into the bedroom, John watched him recline on the bed and settle, one arm tucked behind his head. John felt sudden and bitter disappointment. He was so tired. And the couch was about as comfortable as the kitchen table.

"_Come here_" said the man. The accent was starting to sound like a mix of middle eastern and Irish. It was an order but it was light. John could disobey but he was so tired he didn't care.

The man was one big muscle laying on the bed, as relaxed as a tiger in the sun. His eyes were already closed.

" _Did you save me only to fear me_?" Bane asked. " _You risked the pit for my life. Sleep_."

John felt himself turn off the light and lay down. The dimness felt wonderful. Bane radiated heat. He smelled something strange, like chlorine wafting from a pool. He needed to eat something for dinner. Bane settled a big paw on his head and slid it down to his nape. John should've panicked as a relative stranger, a _man, _rubbed his head. The rain picked up, the fans purred. John slept better than he had in years.


	3. Chapter 3

Sorry, life is kicking my ass. Promise to get it together with longer chapters soon. But until then, he's some sweetness.

Bane woke up more slowly than usual. He usually snapped from blackness to awareness with the shock of pain. In this instance he crept to consciousness, becoming aware of things in order of their oddity. The soft fabric he lay on was alien. The warmth of a body beside him was not. He opened his eyes. John Blake's face was close. His long dark lashes were painted across his hollow cheeks.

And his lips were blue. Bane felt adrenaline kick up its familiar bite under his ribs. This is what had woken him. Blake had spent most of the night snoring on his back, mouth gaping like a child's, unaware and unashamed. Now he was quiet and the breaths he did draw were rasping and dry. Bane couldn't smell the young man. All he smelt was medicine, vapors, sickness. He had rolled too close in the night ( Bane knew that he must have also gathered him close…the boy would never have gotten so close on his own stealth. It hurt to think about.)

He must have been breathing the fumes of Bane's vapors for hours. Some of his men came away from his rooms with numb lips and stinging eyes. The dosage was high for Bane with his tolerance; it was nearly lethal to someone clean. He turned the boy on his back and straddled him.

The boy lolled helplessly, pauses between inhales getting more pronounced. For obvious reasons, he couldn't resuscitate him. He instead put his hands behind John's ribs and lifted him, gently pushing his diaphragm to contract and expand. Hopefully this would force enough air into the young man's lungs. He had seen it done once in the pit.

Granted it had been to continue torture and it hadn't worked but here at least there was a telephone, with emergency crews if the action failed. After the third lift, John dragged in a loud gasp and started to move woozily. He opened his clouded brown eyes. Shock lanced through them and Bane became aware of his position.

" Don't." whispered John, starting to shake. He tried to lift his hands. Bane didn't deign to respond. Instead he pulled the boy up into a sitting position against the wall and pulled away.

"_Can you breathe now_?"

John looked confused, understandably.

" What happened?"

" _You inhaled from my mask through the night. It should have killed you_."

He wanted to remark on the reserves of strength in this boy, but he still didn't know why he was here. Tracking this youth had no end game. No plan. And for Bane, this was a rare thing. He preferred to understand every hill and valley of his path.

John's purpling eyelids were fluttering against a hypoxic headache. Bane had endured many.

"How can you have that strapped to your face?"

" _I must_." Bane said simply. He didn't understand himself. Yes, this was his savior. Yes, he was a beautiful anomaly in a world that felt as jarring and sharp as the pit. But why give up these weaknesses, this candidness was new. It felt like he was peeling off husks of burnt skin. John finally managed to open his eyes fully.

" Oh yeah. You were hurt. You were bandaged."

" _I was mauled_." Bane said simply and rose off the bed. It tipped nervously with his weight and John jumped reflexively.

" Where are you going?" he asked. Bane needed to leave, regroup. He had work to do, lives to take, plans to undermine. This was not the time to be thinking of tenderness, of the way the boy's ribs had felt in his hands, smooth and small, like a sparrow's.

A robin's.

" _Rest. I will return tomorrow. I will have answers for you then_."

John was trying to sit up. Bane pushed him back. John glared grudgingly. Bane wanted to touch their eyebrows together, rub the smooth flesh of their foreheads. He knew the softness of that hair in his hands. He left. John was shouting after him.

Bane was out the door and running. He never ran much anymore. There was usually no need. The water in the gutters above sounded like the rain on the pit walls, slicking down into the rock. He had forgotten his coat. He didn't turn back.


	4. Chapter 4

Sexual content ahoy!

John spent most of the day dozing. He'd been conscious enough to call out of work with a genuinely rough voice but besides that he'd just laid there. In the afternoon he'd managed to get up and take a piss but he'd immediately sunk down into the couch cushions afterwards. He'd never felt quite like this before. And he'd been on oxycotin for weeks. He couldn't imagine lumbering under this lethargy. It was even more of a mystery as to how Bane moved so fast.

The next time he opened his eyes, the sky outside was a rich royal blue and someone was rooting through his kitchen. It was Bane. He smelled like tar. John knew he should be more suspicious. He knew next to nothing about this person, other than the fact that he had been a convicted criminal in one of the worst places in thr world. The things he couldhave done, couldbe doing…John managed to sit up. Bane emerged from the kitchen. The stove top was making the apartment warm and his shirt was off. Thick leather bands wrapped around his waist. His chest was massive and thick. It was like sizing up a rhino. John tried to get up. Bane pushed him down gently with one enormous hand. It was like being batted by a tiger. John went back down helplessly.

" _You are especially sensitive_" Bane said in his grim rumble. " _I must remember to sleep at your back_."

"You're being a little forward." John murmured and Bane walked back into the kitchen. John blinked. Bane was back with a steaming bowl.

" You must eat. You're too small." Bane said. John grumbled at the fawning as Bane lifted him up to lean into him. Those dark eyes were peering down at him curiously. This close to him, John's heart beat started to pick up. This is how you'd hold a girl before you kissed her. Instead Bane started to tip the bowl towards John's mouth. He sputtered and recoiled.

"That's fucking hot. It'll burn me."

"_Heat is a luxury_." Bane said in annoyance. But he didn't tip the bowl again.

"How do you eat?" John asked and raised a hand to touch the mask. Bane let him, body docile. But his eyes were hard. John dropped his hand away.

" Sorry."

_" It is nothing you have done_." Bane said and lay John back down, putting the soup on the side table and standing. John felt like a tool.

" If you get a spoon, I can feed myself." John said and Bane left the room. The cabinets and drawers rattled away. He came back with a spoon too fast for John's liking. He was still burning with shame. This person was trying to help him and here he was, butting into his business and rejecting his attempts at nursing.

" I'm sorry," John said, " Is there anything that can be done about the injury? Skin grafts maybe?"

Bane didn't respond, he simply sat down and scooped up some soup into the spoon. Pulling John up again, more roughly than before he nudged the utensil at his lips. It was still pretty hot but John sucked it down anyway. It was rich and salty. Bane didn't say anything more. John was halfway through the soup when Bane spoke again.

" _There is nothing to be done_." Bane hummed.

" Is it the age of the injury? The cost?" John pressed.

It had to be nearly impossible to get medical treatment when you were a criminal on the run…and essentially an illegal immigrant. That was another thing John didn't want to think about. He was harboring a fugitive, Jesus.

" Ok, we won't talk about that. But you have to tell me. Why were you down there?"

Bane looked at him and John suddenly got the impression that behind those steel mandibles, he was a handsome man. It made a flush rise up in his cheeks. He held that stare until those narrowed eyes relaxed.

" _I was given as collateral to pay my father's debt_."

John was so shocked he forgot to close his mouth. Bane took the opportunity to shove in a spoonful of soup. Choking, John wiped his mouth and asked in a halting voice

" You didn't do anything?"

"_ I was offered up before I had a command of language_," bane said.

John knew it could be a lie. He'd heard his partner talk about the numerous sob stories the Joker used to break people's guard down. But Bane didn't seem to be looking for anything from the story. Not even sympathy. It was just a fact he was relaying. John relaxed back into the couch.

" You can stay here, if you want." Bane looked at him and John felt like he was being humored.

" _You would be hard pressed to remove me. I owe you a debt."_

John went back to work the next day. But when he would come home at night, Bane would usually be there. John was usually too tired to do much than make a simple meal and sleep but having a live in guest somehow made him less miserable.

They didn't talk much and they certainly didn't do much sharing but it was like coming home to a loyal Rottweiler who would watch the history channel with him and stand warm at his back while he made goulash. They read together, shared the bed. John kept wanting to talk about it, rationalize it but it wasn't explainable.

Sure, Bane was attractive and John was sex starved, that could be it. Growing up homosexual might have been more difficult if he'd had the time to pursue it. But he'd been in survival mode for a long time. He'd been hyper alert for sexual misconduct from foster parents, so much that he'd flown by his formative years of sexual exploration and become a cynical virgin. In fact, the only reason he knew his attraction was because of Bruce Wayne. The CEO had come to the orphanage to inspire hope and he had. But he'd also unconsciously shared with John two secrets. Bruce Wayne was Batman and John wanted to put his mouth on his collar bone. It was only now, sleeping with a massive man curled around him at night, that desire touched him.

Now Bane lived with him, quietly cohabitating and John was confused. He'd stopped using his alarm as Bane had taken to gently waking him in the morning like a heavy boned cat. And he would find himself occasionally helping Bane while he read, some words even forcing him online looking for definitions. It was a comfortable life until one night.

He'd had to break up public sex that night, the two twined together wet in the humid park. They'd been flushed still shuddering toward each other's rotation, too hot for shame. John wanted to go home, get in the shower and jack off but Bane was in there, doing whatever it was that took him so long. He'd lay down on the bed to wait him out, flushed and irritated and had fallen asleep.

In the dream, he'd been in the park, near the same cluster of trees where he'd broken the two men apart. They were there in front of him shining with sweat, the smaller man curved to the larger's chest, grinding back on him sweetly. The larger man had dark eyes and his bug mandibles were feeling all over his partner's face, tearing the skin off bloodlessly. John wanted to be afraid. He was instead pulsing with arousal. The skin slipped away to show a black cowl. Bruce Wayne keened and offered his mouth up that clicking monstrous mouth.

John woke up with a huff. For a moment, he just laid there, shuddering. He hadn't come, and he was so hard it was buckling him forward, slicking his thighs where his cock was trapped. The lights were off and Bane was behind him. But he wasn't breathing like he was asleep.

A heavy hand settled on John's hip. He whined.

" _Do you permit it_?"

" Fuck, yeah," John whispered back.

The hand slid down. It covered most of his pelvis. God, he was close. The hand nudged past his pants and closed around him, hot and tight. He couldn't catch his breath. Bane rubbed his forehead against John's slick neck. The hot flesh and cool leather made a drop of precum roll into Bane's fingers. Bane's breathing didn't pick up. He seemed, in fact, to get calmer.

" _Look at me_," he said.

John turned his head and moaned. Bane's eyes were liquid fire. He could dismember John as easily as a hyena. But he wouldn't. John shuddered with pleasure, as Bane dragged a thumb under the sensitive head.

"I wish I could kiss you." John grunted and Bane dragged the cold metal mask against his shoulder. John came so hard, it was almost too much, like a wave that sharply bowls you into the sand and then withdraws. The orgasm left him shuddering; Bane pulled John's shirt off in order to wipe his hand clean and throw it away. John suddenly felt like an asshole. He reached out to return the favor and Bane caught his hand so hard that the orgasm lethargy vanished. Then he gentled his hand and soothed it by rubbing his thumb over the joint.

" Why?" asked John, feeling weirdly put out. Bane lowered his head to rub their cheeks together like a contented cat. John tried to ignore the fact that only slices of Bane's face were available for this kind of attention. John was really just starting to realize how crippling this bisecting mask and the injury it abated really was.

" _My face was not the only casualty of the attack_." John's head pounded with shame. It explained the absence of Bane's excitement.

" I'm sorry," he whispered. " You shouldn't have had to…I just assumed."

" _It brought me pleasure… of a kind_." John put his face into Bane's muscled chest. His body was unbelievably warm. John could sleep like this.

" _You must turn over_." Bane said, as he rolled him gently away, sealing himself against his back. He settled a heavy arm around John's waist. The adrenaline had woken him up a little. And he was so goddamn curious. He wanted to know his story.

" I didn't think you'd be ok with…someone like me. The stories I've heard of prison…and what's been done to you…"

Bane settled his paw on John's sternum, kneading soothingly. He was clearly trying to put him to sleep. When five minutes passed without John buckling, Bane sighed.

" _When I was old enough to be released to the general public, rape was commonplace. The first man to touch me in interest, killed. I was not targeted after that_. "

John felt a cold shiver but Bane continued unaffected.

" _But as my adolescence came, so did war above. The war lord stopped sending supplies, doctors. Many died. Some men would violate the bodies, which we could not bury, which we could not remove. There was no clean water. The plague nearly emptied the prison. When the war lord again became interested, when supplies came, the survivors reigned in the new comers. Sexuality was correlated to disease and it was not tolerated. It had to be permitted under the public eye. Years passed and an event…changed this view. I was attacked in the first break of this order. At this time, it is all I will say on the matter_."

John felt like he couldn't breathe, like he could either scream in rage or crumple into tears. He'd grown up isolated, neglected. But he'd clearly never suffered. This man could easily have come into John's home, raped and kept him. That he accepted affection and gave it…John couldn't fathom that kind of strength. He cradled Bane's hand, brought it to his mouth and kissed his fingers. Bane rumbled pleasantly.

" I've always felt that I was meant to do something great. I think it was saving you." John said. Bane rubbed his stomach, making John chortle at the tickle of nerves, so Bane brought his palm to flatten over the crest of his hip, pulling him closer.

" _I don't know about that_." Bane said but John was drowsing already. He would turn over the words in his mind later but now he was sated. And for the first time, he felt some spiritual surety. He'd been used to answer a prayer. It had all been worth something. If he ever met his hero again, he could be proud.


	5. Chapter 5

Hey, so I have been completely stopped up in the writing department. Complete road block but now new ideas are coming along, so here's a tiny pittance to make up for the ridiculous radio silence.

Bane left early that morning to return to his work. Serving the underling of a major corporation was not glamorous but it paid for his mechanisms, his food. It paid for the small moments with John, like the night before. His body sang with the pleasure of it. Even if his ruined flesh still ached somewhat. He had been picked up a private car; Daggett was a fool but his right hand knew to be secretive. A giant man with a grated face mask would eventually trickle back to Bruce Wayne, no matter how much the fool he seemed to play. Bane knew it an acted role when he saw one. Bane did not agree to play into Daggett's hand out of ideology but Wayne intrigued him with his easy small and hard shifting eyes.

The car stopped and Bane went to get out. The opposite door opened and a young woman swept in, sitting next to him. Bane waited for an explanation. Daggett employed many young women.

" You're just as I remember you." Her accent had softened with age, with some foreign element to him, perhaps French. But he still knew her. Knew her every inflection.

His heart ached and the dark seemed all the more great.

"_Talia_."

* * *

John writhed around in his empty bed for a while. It smelled fantastic, the way good sex always did. He felt like he'd gotten a good scratch, satisfied but the area awakened and sensitive for more. He stood, stretching tall to crack his back. Bane wasn't in the kitchen. He wasn't in the apartment. John felt a tiny flicker of disappointment. But like feeding a stray cat, he knew he couldn't depend on his guest to always be there. He dressed carefully today.

Gordon was coming into the station today. John felt like a kid meeting his idol, which indeed he was. Gordon was the cop who stood almost single handedly against the mob, the costumed criminals, the corrupt cops. The Joker. The man who'd also reluctantly smashed the bat signal. The wind seeped out of John's sails. What to say to a man who'd seen, done, fought everything. John spared a thought for Bruce Wayne, locked away somewhere. His hero, living in martyrdom. John straightened his uniform and stepped outside and into the world he didn't have a real place in.

He wondered where Bane was. It kind of worried him that he wanted to stay home and wait for him.

* * *

She was lovelier than ever, her hair and skin clean. Her frame was sleek in black but there was martial training in the lines of her shoulders. She was a woman, regal and stern like her mother. She held her hands soft and open in an act of subservience. But the hard drive for survival was back lit by something different now. There was mania there.

" You weren't there when I returned for you." That pricked up his ears. There was guilt laid into her voice.

" _You should not have returned, you could have been reclaimed by the pit. That was not what I wanted for you._ " He said. Her green eyes were fastened onto his face but his kept skating away. He knew what he looked like. A soft cool hand slid over the orbit of his eye. It took all of his strength not to shudder away from it.

" You should not be ashamed. You took on these wounds protecting me," she smoothed a thumb under his eye. " Who has taken the honor of your rescue from me?"

He hesitated. He didn't know this blood lust in her. He didn't want it falling on John.

" _A soldier_," he murmured. He saw John in his mind, repelling down from the light and reaching for him with slim opens hands and the leeches peeled from the walls and advanced for him.

" _Just a boy_."

" I would like to meet him, he sounds worthy. As you have always been." She smiled. For the first time, he'd ever been with her, his light, he paused.


End file.
